Back in August 2012 I did an interview with him for my radio show “The Magic Flight”. We talked about his book “140 goats and a guitar” and the way he brings his ideas into dance music.
David, I gotta tell you something: I think the quality of electronic dance music has grown dramatically because of the collaborations from producers with singer-songwriters like you.
Uhm… Thanks, I agree. You know, I spend a great deal of time with my lyrics trying to craft images. And by bringing this into EDM, the music gets a quality it hasn’t had before.
I remember an interview with a producer who told me that he missed some kind of human element in the electronic music, so he fixed this gap with his guitar sound. In a sense your voice is another human element…
Exactly that’s what we – the producers and me – go for when working together: They bring the electronic component and I bring the human component. And in my opinion the human voice is as personal and emotional as we are.
Right. I always keep saying: My favorite musical instrument is the human voice. Who was the first producer you “lent” your voice?
The first collaboration with an EDM artist was with Steve Brian. It was a remix of a song of mine called “Fire Sign”. And then I started working with Sean Tyas as well and a number of other producers like Pete Finley from Miami. I work in different ways when collaborating with DJs and EDM producers.
Typically a DJ will send me a simple track, mostly drum, bass and keys. And then I try to craft a song over that. Often the EDM tracks have very few chord changes which is the opposite of the music that I normally write. So, this is always some kind of challenge.
The second possibility is that producers want to do a remix of an already existing song. “Fire Sign” would be an example for this procedure.
There’s also a third possibility. I’ve been practicing this with Pete Finley a lot for our project “The Orchard Thieves”: I write a song from scratch, then he takes the song and pulls the vocal out. Then he builds a dance track around that vocal. Later he sends me a new template based on that song. Often I re-sing it and we build it from there. When I write songs for EDM I try to keep them far simpler than when I am writing a folk song.
How is your relationship to the dance music in general?
Pete Finley more or less turned me into the electronic music. Also he coached me in terms of how to write a song for the genre because it is a very different thing. In my folk music I try to be very specific with the lyrics that I write and bring in specific images of places and times. And for dance on the other hand the lyrics have to more universal. They can’t be too heady because you don’t want to interfere with people dancing and having a good time.
But “Fire Sign” which is a really complex song does work pretty well on the dancefloor…
That’s true. I think “Fire Sign” works on a couple of levels. The images are strong enough, so they feel good when you hear them immediately. But when you want to listen more carefully, you can get out a deeper meaning. That’s probably the perfect lyric – a lyric that can work very quickly but then also when you think about it a little longer.
Besides dance music are there any other musicians that you’ve worked with so far?
As a singer-songwriter I tour solo as well as with several of my band mates in America. And as mentioned before I have this project with Pete Finley.
I do really enjoy working on dance music projects. I’ve only performed one show live which was with Sean Tyas in New York where we did a couple of songs that he and I did together. That was really fun for me. Quite different to playing in folk clubs.
Where do you get your inspirations from when writing songs? Are there any musicians that inspire you?
I get my inspiration from a lot of things especially from my life with my family, also from travelling and seeing new parts of the world. I moved a lot and lived in many different places. Recently we just moved to Santa Fe in New Mexico.
With the dance tracks I get a lot of inspiration from the tracks that the DJs send me. I spend much time thinking and feeling what that piece is trying to express. My goal is to articulate that. Often I create a story that gets some of the emotion out. When I was initially coached by Pete Finley, he gave me an analogy that has helped me to understand dance music. He said: “Imagine that you are running through the Scottish Highlands. The verse of a song is that. And the chorus is that you are lifting off into the sky and flying through the air. But if you are trying to write a lyric which expresses that, then don’t necessarily mention Scotland.” He gave me those things avoid mentioning. So you’d rather be unspecific. For me it’s about trying to find a way to articulate these highs in emotions in a way that anyway can relate to. I guess I draw a lot of inspiration from love and love lost and from people who suffer. Interestingly, I am more inspired by poetry than by other music, although I love music and listen to it all the time.
You have also written a book (“140 Goats and a Guitar”) in which you describe the process how each song has developed. It includes a download code so you can listen to the songs and read about the story behind.
Yes. You know, when I play folk music concerts, I often tell stories to set up the songs that I then play.
I wrote a lot of the songs of the album “Some Kind of Cure” while living on the island of Corsica with my family. While I was there, I was writing a lot about what I was seeing and feeling. A number of things happened to us during that year and many of those experiences led to the songs that I wrote. So, when I got back and was recording the record, I thought it might be a good idea to write a book to tell these stories. That way you can see how my life turned into each song.
I really like this idea because I’m a huge fan of CD booklets.
Yeah, this is like a 200-page-booklet. (He laughs)
You describe your music as “Indie Folk” or “Romantic Realism”. Has the last term something to do with the fact that you once got your girlfriend back and also married her after writing a song for her?
The term “Romantic Realism” is an oxymoron because the terms romanticism and realism are some kind of opposed. I am a romantic. I believe that things work out and that the boy does find the girl in the end. On the other hand I’m not so naïve to believe that everything is just easy. I know there’s a lot of pain and suffering in the world. I think that my music generally starts from the place of the pain and tries as hard as I can to work things out.
Once you have recorded your songs, you have to think about how to sell them which isn’t always that easy these days. Please tell me something about the fan-fundraising that you did for your album.
The reality of music today is that you can’t count on a record label to give you money. And I’ve been lucky to have a small but dedicated fan-base that supports me in the things I do. So with my latest record “Some Kind of Cure” I asked for money to fund the record, but felt guilty doing it because it was in the time when the economy in the world was really bad. And if someone had thousand dollars to give, I’d favor they’d give it to needy children or a cause that was much more worthy than my music. So I didn’t just ask straight out for money. I set up a bunch of different gifts that they would get in return that I would be able to give – like private concerts, songs written for people or an autographed CD. I even wrote songs for people who were trying to win a girl.
Another interesting thing you did was that you gave an interactive concert via the internet. Do you think that’s what the future of the music industry looks like? Is it based on tips and donation?
I hope not. The tips and donation thing is not too different from asking for money to fundraise a record. The online concert is a really weird thing because in a lot of ways it goes against everything I love about music: I love going to see music live and I love performing music live. I love seeing and feeling the audience right there. For me as a performer this relationship is really why I do it. However, I can’t get to every place I want to get to. Travelling there can be very expensive. I’ve never performed in Germany for example. So, the online platform gives you a chance to reach more fans. But it definitely isn’t a replacement, rather some kind of supplement. But as I now see my kids coming into this world, I worry about how virtual everything is and how attached we are to the phone and the computer. And the idea that music can become like this too, is very scary. However I like the idea of coming into my studio some evening, turn on my computer and play for half an hour and have people across the world to see it.
How do your future plans look like?
I don’t have any big tours planned right now. I have a small number of shows coming up. I have this project with Pete Finley which I mentioned a few times now. (He laughs)
And I have a bunch of new David Berkeley songs that I’m working on. I will potentially release a vinyl album because a number of the songs I wrote have pretty cool folk versions.
And I’m also working on a new book that is taking me far longer than I hoped it would take me. It’s kind of on the same model as “140 Goats and a Guitar”. But these short stories are fiction. I will write songs that will go along with those stories.
You can find more information about David Berkeley on www.davidberkeley.com or on www.facebook.com/davidberkeleymusic
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